Indonesian President Calls for Calm After Church Attack in Aceh

JAKARTA, Indonesia — President Joko Widodo of Indonesia appealed for calm on Wednesday in the fractious province of Aceh after a man was shot to death during a brawl set off by the razing of a Christian church.

Aceh, on the northern tip of the western island of Sumatra, is among the most religiously conservative regions of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. It is the only province authorized to apply Islamic law.

On Tuesday, according to Indonesian news reports, dozens of people with sticks and sharp weapons burned a Protestant church in a house in the district of Aceh Singkil, claiming that it did not have proper permits.

The mob then moved to a second church, where a group of people standing guard, including the police and military personnel, confronted them, the reports said. One member of the mob, later identified as Syamsul, was shot in the head by an unknown assailant, while four others were wounded by gunfire, including an army soldier, The Jakarta Globe reported.

“Stop the violence in Aceh Singkil,” Mr. Joko said on his Twitter account on Wednesday morning. “Any background of violence, especially religion and faith, undermines diversity.”

Around 90 percent of Indonesia’s 250 million people identify as Muslim, but the country also has influential religious minorities, including Christians, Balinese Hindus and Buddhists.

Indonesia is regarded internationally as an example of mainstream Islam and religious pluralism. In recent years, though, it has been the scene of attacks on religious minorities by hard-line Islamic groups, as well as the forced closing or destruction of dozens of houses of worship, including in Aceh, under the pretext of their not having proper permits.

National law requires that houses of worship receive approval from the local government and residents before they can open.

Jusuf Kalla, the Indonesian vice president, called on Wednesday for a law or government regulation mandating tolerance in legal matters related to houses of worship.

“Otherwise, eventually people make their own rules,” he told reporters, referring to mob violence, after attending a ceremony celebrating Islamic New Year in Jakarta, the capital, at the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: World Briefing | Asia; Indonesia: An Appeal for Calm. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe